(FORTUNE Magazine) – "As we prepare for Y2K," writes Eric Utne, in a recent supplement to his touchy-feely Utne Reader, "something surprising and unexpected and quite wonderful is going to happen. We're going to get to know our neighbors. Possibly for the first time in our lives, we will begin to know what it means to live in [sic] real community."

Well, that's one possibility. Another is that the whole idea of community will get chucked in favor of a more pragmatic philosophy: survival of the fittest. A recent Gallup poll for the National Science Foundation found that more than two-thirds of Americans expect Y2K problems will last at least several weeks. More than 25% intend to stockpile food and water. And 16% say they will withdraw all their money from the bank. Chances are, they won't be spending that cash on a block party.

But while the Y2K computer bug is looming large in 1999, the effects will vary considerably. With computers in businesses, governments, regulatory agencies, and homes becoming ever more interconnected, controlling all the variables is essentially impossible. Most big American companies have invested heavily in making the transition to the year "00" as smooth as possible. Even so, just how they're affected will depend largely on what kind of business they're in. "What companies should be doing now," says Dale Vecchio, a Y2K analyst at the Gartner Group research firm, "is figuring out how they can minimize the risk of someone else's failure having an impact on them." If you're operating in Europe, for example, will the power still work on New Year's Day?

Purely technical glitches may constitute only a fraction of the Y2K fallout; public uncertainty and outright fear could also be huge factors. For some companies, that would be fine: Generators and freeze-dried foods are already selling briskly. And just as consumers will lay in extra groceries, businesses will stock up on inventory. Suppliers of that inventory should have a booming second half. Expect utilities, for instance, to buy extra coal and gas, just in case.

As for the tech companies themselves, analysts foresee a bizarre year. Gartner Group is telling clients to expect "a historically unprecedented shift in spending patterns." Total buying could rise at companies like Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, but it will be heavily weighted to the year's first half. By the fourth quarter--as customers hunker down for final testing of their existing systems--some types of spending may shrink radically. Infrastructure products such as Cisco's networking equipment or Sun's Internet servers will likely fall into this category. Enterprise software companies SAP and PeopleSoft have already seen sales soften, since the complex products they sell take longer than a year to install.

Many smaller technology-services firms expect a rough year. Because so many clients will freeze development after July, Chan Suh, CEO of Agency.com, a top New York developer of e-commerce systems for FORTUNE 500 companies, sees "basically a six-month tech cycle for the year."

The big day will eventually pass, but Y2K could prove a lasting boon. Y2K programs have swelled corporate infotech budgets to unprecedented levels, and historically such budgets rarely shrink. That makes Larry Vale, director of marketing for Keane, a billion-dollar infotech-services firm in Boston, look forward to a prosperous 21st century: "Y2K has been tremendous," he says. "It gets us into an account, and we never leave."

--D.K.